Masters of All Booties
by Dantriestobeproductive
Summary: Masters of All Time AU. When Danny time travels to avoid Vlad becoming a half-ghost, he wasn't expecting this outcome. At all. VladxMaddiexJack.


I edited and proofread it, but it's two a.m. here so...yeah, sorry for the mistakes. (And the possible OOC? I'm not in a right state of mind for this orz)

* * *

What Danny expects to happen when he travels back in time to push Vlad out of the way and avert him becoming a halfa is to all his problems to be solved when he returns to the present, or at least all his Vlad-related problems (starting with _infecting his friends with ecto-acne_).

What he's not expecting is _this_.

* * *

To be honest, he should have know that something was amiss the moment he stepped out from the Portal to an _unusually clean_ lab. But he'd shrugged, assumed that Jazz or even his father (ha! More like his mother, his father cleaned like he caught ghosts: _messily_) had cleaned in his place and, bracing himself for a lecture if it had been his mother's doing (since Jazz had his back since she'd discovered the half-ghost thing, and wouldn't complain about cleaning, precisely), he'd gone up the stairs, hoping without hope that they would lead him to the broom closet instead of the kitchen if just to avoid confrontation for a little longer.

They don't.

Instead, he's faced with a clean, slightly different kitchen than he remembers, and the differences are small enough that they jar him, making him frown. The new experiments in his parents' lab had been one thing, but this, this worries him a little. It's not even that it's completely different, it just looks...newer, and the chairs are different, looking cozier and with a bit of elegance that his parents would _never_ look for when buying a chair.

Feeling the beginnings of wariness tugging at his chest, he steps carefully into the living room, and blinks owlishly at what he sees. It's..._different_, and it has _green_ and _gold_ elements woven with the rest of the room, like lamps or knickknacks, just enough to be tasteful instead of an eyesore. The TV is _big_, bigger than the one they have–had? And yeah, the room looks a little more lived in than the lab and kitchen did, which reminds him a little more of home, but it's so _different_ at the same time that it's starting to really creep him out.

He sees a row of photos hanged in the wall opposite of where he's standing dumbfounded, and he slowly walks towards them, wariness growing with each step.

And _oh-boy_, with what reason.

Hanging in the wall, the cheerful faces of his parents greet him, but they're not _alone_. Vlad, Vlad _Masters_, Vlad _I-want-to-kill-your-dad-and-marry-your-mom _Masters, is there, smiling with his parents, the three of them hugging or touching _or looking at each other_. There's one of the three of them kissing each others' _cheeks_, and he notes with growing horror one particular photo where they are dressing formally, _getting married-formally_, with his mother wearing a wedding dress and Jack and Vlad wearing a tux, and the three of them smile joyously, showing the matching golden rings in their left hand.

Danny is having an aneurysm. Or maybe it's a panic attack, because he feels like giggling hysterically, while his chest is constricting painfully because he can't breathe. And gosh, it usually takes his body minutes before he starts to feel the need to resume breathing, which basically means he hasn't taken a breath since he started looking at the pictures.

Oh.

Oh _poop_.

The photos, the photos keep documenting what Danny is coming to understand with growing horror as something that _happened_, in the past twenty years he undid, and in all of them the three–threesome? Trio? What term is even there for _this_–are shown laughing, happy, yes, but- but there are no kids! Not a single picture shows his mother, his father, or crap even _Vlad_ holding a baby, _none_, nor an infant or a kid. Nada.

They don't have children.

Which means he doesn't even exist.

Danny's stomach twists and now he feels like puking along with laughing hysterically. His parents- his parents-

He folds in himself, and tries to breathe, slowly and methodically, like the psychiatrist told him to do, the first weeks after gaining ghosts powers and when he still completely _lost it_ every time his powers acted up. It works, a little, and he transforms into Phantom if just to get over it quicker. In ghost form, feelings and emotions get duller, less suffocating, and he sighs in relief when the choking anxiety becomes an irksome but ignorable prick in his chest. With green eyes, he looks back to the pictures, to the life he unknowingly helped to create, and he frowns.

He needs to undo this.

Then, the clink of a door opening sounds, and Danny's so startled he turns invisible. For the better, he realizes, when his parents come in hands full of groceries, and he ignores the itch to turn human and help them in favor of watching them go on about their day.

It's weird, really, _really_ weird.

Danny listens on their conversation, and from the way they talk to the way they act is _exactly_ like his parents. It almost makes him feel like he's listening in on _his_ parents, except that once in a while they'll say something, or do a little gesture, and the illusion will shatter again. They're basically the same, yes, but the way his father mentions Vlad name is different, not with the booming quality and shiny eyes he's grown accustomed to hear and see, but with something gentler, still excited, but in the way he's when he talks about his mother. She, too, sounds _way_ fonder of Vlad than his own mom.

And wow, if that isn't jarring. He's going to have nightmares, hearing them cheerfully talk about his archenemy, whilst taking out a bottle of wine and begging to cook what he assumes will be a romantic dinner, given how his mother is keeping an eye on his father and giving him easy chores to do in worry that he'll stumble and crash the pile of plates he's eyeing with interest. Yeah, no, his pops' too excited to be near anything fragile at the moment.

As he hears them babble about things having to be ready before Vlad comes home, Danny begins to worry, the old wariness of the man resurfacing. He doesn't think he'll hurt his parents, he's had _twenty years_ to do that after all, but the old paranoia that Vlad will be able to _sense_ him is worrying enough, even if it's dumb. Vlad isn't a half-ghost anymore.

...There are _no_ half-ghosts anymore.

A sigh is punched out from his lips, sounding eerily like a last breath, and Danny shoots up and through the walls of the house, to the open sky, up and up until he can't see Amity anymore and then higher until the only thing under him are clouds, and the starry sky greets him.

He stays there for hours, floating limply like a drowning man, closing his eyes to forget and, for a while, pretend he's just relaxing like he's used to do when he needs a break, feeling secure in the knowledge that his friends and family will be there when he goes back.

* * *

It's dark before Danny flies back to Amity, determined to go straight to the Portal and Clockwork and beg him to undo all this. A little part of him feels guilty, because his parents seem happy, and the Vlad in the photos seemed so _happy_, but the bigger part of him scoffs, and assures himself that _surely_ Vlad is still the same bastard, in a way or another, and has somehow managed to trick his parents for this long. He then squashes the little voice that pops up skeptically with the reminder that _he doesn't exist_, he has _no purpose_ in this world. No life, no family or friends, nothing. He has less than the Vlad in his world–and the thought makes him pause a second, before he shakes it off and returns his attention to the house that's getting closer, and he needs to calculate carefully so he won't end up underground instead of in the lab.

He'll hold to his dying breath that him being concentrated is the reason he doesn't see the ghost shield until he finds himself face-first with it. Danny groans, and tumbles back, rolling backwards as he hits his back against the shield, and then his face again, until he is far away from the semi-sphere of energy that when he falls back it's into a dumpster.

Not his brightest moment.

He groans, carefully touching his face as he comes back to his senses, and curses himself for not slowing down on his way back to the house. Really, at the speed he was he would have ended up underground anyway or smacked himself against the lab's floor. No wonder he's a C student.

Getting out the dumpster, and cleaning off the banana peel from his shoulder, Danny swiftly looks around before turning into human, and strolling as casually as he can inside the barrier, sighing internally in relief when there's only a little pull, but not an outright rejection. Danny tries to be as inconspicuous as he can as he comes closer to the house but, huh, someone has to see him, because suddenly the door opens and Vlad Masters is standing there, wearing casual clothes that make Danny's brain hit a mental wall.

One thing is seeing it in pictures, but _this_-

"Can I help you?" asks the man he's hated for as long as he knows him, without a single gleam of recognition, and Danny stares at him with his mouth half-open, baffled as he takes in the strange Vlad-but-not-Vlad in front of him. "Child, are you okay?" he asks again, and he sounds _concerned_ and it's _nothing_ like his fake-concerned voice and this is worse than that movie with the kid who saw dead people and the guy who you thought was alive and at the end was shown as being dead _all along_.

Finally, when Maddie's–his mother's–face pops up behind Vlad he snaps out of it.

"Is everything okay?" she asks, looking from Vlad to him with slight concern, and Danny kind of wants to cry and hid in her arms.

_But he's not her son_.

"Y-yes," he croaks out, looking away from the pair of concerned faces and finding himself face to face to a little garden. Huh, he hadn't even realized there was one. "I just– those flowers are very pretty."

He wants to wince. He's told lies better than that, and he only hopes that his mother being _not his mother_ will make her not realize he's grasping at straws.

"Oh? Oh, yes, they are! Aren't they?" she says brightly, and Danny knows he's got himself out of a good one, so he looks back to his smiling mother and gives her a small smile in return. "They're anti-ghost roses, also called Blood Blossoms," she explains cheerfully, and his smile disappears from his face.

Vlad frowns concerned, and slightly suspicious, at the pale color of his face, but Danny manages to croak out "G-ghosts?" and, incidentally, give off the wrong impression.

"Yes. Oh, you poor thing, are you afraid of ghosts?" his mother asks, eyes wide in concern, and even Vlad seems sympathetic.

"I can cut you some if you want, dear boy, for protection," Vlad offers, and Maddie nods, and Danny doesn't know if his little smile is of horror or created by the mental destruction of reality as he knows it that his brain is going through at the moment. "Where are your parents, anyway? It's too late to be out alone," he adds, looking around and scoffing, as if he disapproved of his parents' decision of leaving him outside at night, and he swallows the sudden urge to laugh, laughter that he has the feeling would sound too hysterical for his own good anyway.

"They're waiting at the Nasty Burger," he blurts out, before he can think of it. "We, huh, we are traveling, and we stopped here to eat and relax a little and, uh, I wanted to stretch my legs." He smiles, pointedly ignoring how _bad_ the lie is, and then takes a chance and says "Soooo, the ghost thing it's not, it's not a publicity stunt?"

He hopes his nervousness passes off as fear and that he hasn't screwed it all up, because he doesn't even know if they have the same problem with ghosts here as with _his_ Amity, but his mother smiles and Vlad looks a little smug, so he supposes they _do_.

He's not sure how he feels about an Amity with ghosts but not _him_.

"No, dear boy, the ghosts are very real," Vlad chuckles, and the sound both grates on his nerves and makes him want to blast the man. That chuckle is _very_ familiar, and not from happy memories. "But don't fear, they usually don't come out at night."

Danny frowns, and is in the process of opening his mouth to ask, but then he hears his father's booming voice, and he emerges from the house, drying his hands with a towel and a curious smile in his mouth.

"Vladdie? Madds? What's the-?" he begins, and then he sees him, and his face scrunches up in confusion. "Oh?"

"He was asking about the flowers, dear," Vlads explains helpfully, smiling with a touch of pride, and Danny understands with a feeling like whiplash that _he's_ the one who takes care of the plants. "It's that why you came near our house, child?"

"Yeah, I- yeah. They looked pretty cool," Danny says, his smile becoming a little strained when he realizes his father is hugging both his mother _and Vlad_ by the waist, looking at his- his _husband_ as the man talks.

He's begging to feel creeped out again.

"I, um, I need to go back to my parents," _woah if I do_, Danny thinks, pleading for this weird nightmare of a world to end. "Sorry to interrupt, ah, have a good night."

He regrets saying _that_ the moment it comes out of his mouth. His- The- The _trio_ just smiles, a little confused, and waves him goodbye, before closing the door behind him. Paranoid of Vlad spying on him from a window, he walks all the way to the next street, where he turns left and promptly slumps against a wall.

"Clockwork, _why_?" he murmurs, and he swears he can hear laughter in the distance.

* * *

Danny goes to the Nasty Burger and buys himself something to munch on as he waits for his parents and Vlad to go- to bed. The moment he thinks about it, he shakes his head furiously. He's _not_ going to think about- ugh-

So, Danny sits on the roof of the house next to his, turning back to his human form so avoid raising attention (turning into a ghost may have its perks, but glowing like a nightlight isn't one of them), and prepares himself for a long, boring night waiting for the kitchen light to get turned off.

That keeps on.

And keeps on.

And when the clock marks three a. m. and there's still no sign that the kitchen light is going to turn off anytime soon, he just assumes they're in a spree and have locked themselves in the lab, which means they won't come out until dawn. Great.

Sighing, Danny lies down in the grimy roof, curses himself for the twentieth time that night, and closes his eyes. It doesn't take long for sleep to greet him.

* * *

When he wakes up, he's back in Clockwork's lair, and the ghost is smirking at him from above.

"Lesson learned?"

"I still don't know how to cure my friends," Danny frowns, weary after the day he just had in that- that _reality_.

The ghost of time sighs and, with a swish of his staff, the image of his- of the other house vanishes and is replaced by the now familiar memory of the moment that changed his parents' and Vlad's life forever.

The memory starts to play out.

"Now pay attention," says Clockwork, and that's it.


End file.
